Modern business environment requires variety of telephone services to accommodate increasingly complex and numerous transactions. A call transfer feature has become one of the popular options desired by businesses. A technician in a technical assistance department of a computer manufacturer, for example, receives a telephone call from a purchaser of the computer equipment inquiring about the problem in its operation. After using a diagnostic program to test the computer hardware, the technician concludes that the "bug" resides in the software. He then would like to transfer the call to the software manufacturer having expertise in the software which causes the "bug" and release his telephone line with the computer purchaser to receive other incoming calls.
Currently, customers use their customer premise equipment (CPE), such as a private branch exchange (PBX) or automatic call distributor (ACD), in order to transfer a call from one termination to another. In fact, a call transfer feature has been available on CPE for a long time. However, a call transferred at CPE continues to occupy telephone lines between the long distance carrier network and CPE of a transferring station, even though the call has been transferred to a telephone station outside CPE. Consequently, the capacity of CPE for incoming and outgoing calls is diminished under the current CPE-based transfer.
Typically, the CPE-based transfer appears as two independent and separate telephone calls to the long distance carrier network: one incoming to CPE and one outgoing from it. This presents an additional disadvantage in billing for the transferred call. The caller at transferring station continues to pay for the transferred call, despite the caller's inability and absence of participation in the conversation.
As an alternative to CPE, a local exchange carrier (LEC) may offer a Centrex service with a call transfer feature. The Centrex, however, is a single line telephone service, not being sufficiently flexible to accommodate business needs which require support of many configurations.
A need therefore exists to provide a telecommunications system for transferring a telephone call without the disadvantages associated with the transfer at CPE.